The Respected Rocket – Atlas V making the early strides of the transition

November 25, 2011 by Chris Bergin

While fancy youtube videos and twitter-based cheer-leading continues to be the weapon of choice against the post-Shuttle era depression, one vehicle is quietly going about its business with tangible results, as opposed to backslapping tweets. The Atlas V launch vehicle – about to launch a mission to Mars – is on a winning streak, which includes strides towards its future crewed ambitions.

The two stage rocket is driven by the Russian-built RD AMROSS RD-180 engine – a kerosene/liquid oxygen derivative of the RD-170 engine developed for the Zenit boosters of the Energia rocket – with a Centaur Upper Stage powered by Pratt & Whitney’s RL10 engine burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Atlas V configurations can include Aerojet strap-on boosters.

See Also

The Atlas V is a flight-proven expendable launch vehicle and is currently used by NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD) for critical space missions to launch highly expensive payloads into orbit. Now, Atlas V is walking down the path of proving it can be entrusted with launching humans into orbit.

Ridiculed by previous NASA evaluations during the a period of what sources claim was “protection” for the now-defunct Ares I, Atlas V was shunned from crewed mission viability via the notion of “black zones” – a claim that the vehicle’s trajectory was unable to safely abort a crewed mission in the event of a serious failure.

It was documented that NASA considered – and rejected – the use of Atlas V as a Space Shuttle replacement for human space flight during their Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) in 2005. However, this was mainly based on the heavy Orion crew vehicle of the time.

Little more was heard for a few years, as Atlas V continued to loft payload after payload successfully into orbit, that was until the Commercial Crew drive by NASA, as the Agency scrambled to close the gap between the retirement of the Shuttle’s NASA role and the handover of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to commercial companies.

The process – which includes NASA managers providing oversight into the evaluations – is proceeding to plan, as ULA successfully completed the second required major performance milestone, known as the Design Equivalency Review (DER), which completes a rigorous assessment of the flight-proven Atlas V launch vehicle’s compliance with NASA human spaceflight requirements.

To successfully complete the DER, NASA human spaceflight experts and ULA engineers worked over a span of several months to perform a detailed review of all NASA requirements and processes, and identified the extent to which the Atlas V meets those requirements.

With a hat-tip to how Atlas V is already entrusted with the safe flight of billion dollar spacecraft, the need for any lengthy and inherently risky launch vehicle development program is expected to be avoided.

“The Design Equivalency Review allowed the NASA team to compare their stringent human spaceflight requirements against the Atlas V design and demonstrated performance,” noted George Sowers, vice president of business development and advanced programs.

“The ULA team benefited greatly from NASA’s insight and expertise. The completion of the DER is one more step towards confirming that Atlas V is the best choice for providing near-term, safe and affordable launch services for NASA human spaceflight.

ULA – announcing the news this week – also noted that as NASA moves forward into the first phase of the Commercial Crew Integrated Design Contract (CCIDC), ULA are confident they will be the launch provider of choice to offer human-certified Atlas launch services to meet the needs for the crew transportation system providers.

“The CCIDC is the critical first step towards creating a robust commercial crew transportation capability to low-Earth orbit (LEO). ULA looks forward to continued work with our customers and NASA to develop a U.S. crew space transportation capability providing safe, reliable and cost-effective access to LEO and the International Space Station.” added Dr Sowers.

Other milestones in work include the Development of Hazard Analyses unique for human spaceflight, the Development of a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), the Documenting of Atlas V CTS (Crew Transportation System) certification baseline, and to Conduct Systems Requirements Review (SRR).

The majority of this process is expected to be completed by the end of this year (2011), with the SAA allowing ULA to work with NASA to gain invaluable insight into their unparalleled expertise in Human Spaceflight. Through this SAA, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and ULA will establish an Atlas V system baseline compliance with NASA CTS requirements and processes.

A large part of the effort is focused on the continued development of an Emergency Detection System prototype test bed. The EDS will monitor critical launch vehicle and spacecraft systems and issue status, warning and abort commands to crew during their mission to low Earth orbit.

EDS is the sole significant element necessary for flight safety to meet the requirements to certify ULA’s launch vehicles for human spaceflight, a certification ULA are confident of acquiring.

Boeing are currently working through their CCDev-2 contract milestones – worth over $92m – which is centered around their CST-100 capsule, a vehicle which is configurable to carry up to seven crew/passengers or an equivalent combination of passengers and pressurized cargo to LEO destinations, including the ISS and the BA-330 space complex.

According to an expansive CCDev-2 presentation – acquired by L2 – development kicked off with a Delta Systems Definition Review, followed by a Phase 0 Safety review, both of which were completed in May. A Landing Air Bag drop demo was completed in August, followed by Phase 1 Wind Tunnel Tests.

October was on the schedule for the Interim Design Review (IDR) take place – although its completion is yet to be confirmed – with a Parachute Drop Test demo on the books for next April, part of a total of 25 CCDev2 milestones.

Boeing plans to use wind tunnel testing of the Atlas V and the CST-100 this year to complete a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of the integrated system in 2012 under the second round of its Commercial Crew Development Space Act Agreement with NASA.

The run up to the PDR will include Service Module Propellant Tank Development Tests and the Launch Vehicle Emergency Detection System (EDS)/Avionics System Integration Facility Interface Simulation testing taking place.

Boeing claim they will be ready to provide services by 2015, a target date which is being used by most of the CCDev-2 award winners, as much as recent concerns over NASA funding is threatening slips in the schedule by one to two years.

Blue Origin’s $22m award was for their their biconic-shape capsule, which will initially launch with the Atlas V launch vehicle, prior to hitching a lift uphill via its own Reusable Booster System (RBS).

The vehicle is capable of carrying seven passengers – with an ability for cargo runs – to the ISS, and will be available for independent commercial flights for science, adventure and trips to other orbital destinations.

The Blue Origin vehicle has mostly shunned the public limelight, although the aforementioned CCDev-2 presentation provided some details on the key development milestones.

“During CCDev-2, Blue Origin with mature their Space Vehicle design through System Requirements Review (SRR), mature the Pusher Escape System, and accelerate engine development for the Reusable Booster System (RBS),” noted the presentation.

While all of the aforementioned events have received their “kick off” meetings, the listed milestones include the Space Vehicle Mission Concept Review in September, ahead of key Pusher Escape Test Vehicle shipment and ground firing either side of the new year.

However, Blue Origin did receive a set-back on August 24 in Texas, when an in-flight failure of their second test vehicle – known as the Vertical-Takeoff, Vertical-Landing (VTVL) test vehicle was suffered at 45,000 feet/Mach 1.2, caused by flight instability triggering the range safety system and shut down the vehicle’s engines.

A Pusher Escape Pad Escape Test is scheduled for April, 2012, followed by the SRR in May – the month which will result in the opening RBS Engine Thrust Chamber Assembly (TCA) test.

Dream Chaser is a Reusable, Piloted Lifting Body, Derived from NASA HL­‐20 launching on an Atlas V, with SNC currently working through 19 milestones via its $80m CCDev-2 effort – the latter of which is listed as the Free Flight Test, which will be a piloted Flight test from carrier aircraft to characterize handling qualities and approach and landing.

Milestones, which are listed alongside a schedule document – include a Systems Requirements Review (SRR), Canted Airfoil Fin Selection, and work on their Cockpit Based Flight Simulator – all completed in June and July.

SNC officially announced the confirmation of the Cockpit Based Flight Simulator milestone – albeit only this month – a milestone which assists Dream Chaser engineers in evaluating the vehicle’s characteristics during the piloted phases of flight.

Also noted was the activation of the Dream Chaser Program’s Vehicle Avionics Integration Laboratory (VAIL), completed in September. VAIL is a platform for Dream Chaser avionics development, engineering testing, and integration, and will also be used for verification and validation of avionics and software. The lab is linked to the Cockpit Based Simulator hardware and software for integrated system testing.

“The Dream Chaser team, which includes SNC as well as our industry teammates and our NASA partners, has made tremendous progress over the last four months,” noted Jim Voss, Vice President of SNC’s Space Exploration Systems. “Our simulator and avionics lab give us the ability to do engineering evaluations of our complex systems.

“These successful Milestones, completed on time and within budget, reflect the rapid progress possible in the NASA Commercial Crew Program.”

Other listed notables include the delivery of the Engineering Test Article (ETA) in December, prior to the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) – scheduled for the end of May, 2012.

(Images: L2 Content, NASA CCDev, SNC, ULA, Boeing)

(As the shuttle fleet retire, NSF and L2 are providing full transition level coverage, available no where else on the internet, from Orion and SLS to ISS and COTS/CRS/CCDEV, to European and Russian vehicles.